Giacomo and Giovanni Zoffoli

The Flora Farnese is one of the iconic ancient marbles of the celebrated Farnese collection, which was originally displayed in the courtyard of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome and is now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples. Giacomo and Giovanni Zoffoli were prominent specialists in the field of casting bronze reductions after famous antique models for the Grand Tourist in 18th-century Rome. Another cast of the Flora Farnese by the Zoffoli brothers is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (inv. no. WA1899.CDEF.B446).

Karsten Schubert (1961-2019)

Karsten Schubert was an influential Anglo-German art dealer who played a leading role in promoting the Young British Artists (YBAs) in the 1980s and 1990s. Schubert exhibited the likes of Rachel Whiteread, Alison Wilding, Gary Hume, Michael Landy and Ian Davenport, as well as then more internationally well-known artists such as Gerhard Richter and Bridget Riley. Later in life Schubert founded Ridinghorse a high-end art historical publisher, named after an art space he had opened in 1995 with Charles Asprey and Thomas Dane.

In Schubert’s obituary in The Guardian, Charles Darwent noted that, ‘For all his love of Britain and English tailoring – he became a British citizen not long before his death – he had a depth of culture and historical understanding that remained admirably German…. When he wrote his own history of museology, The Curator’s Egg (2000), it was with the easy assurance of one who could quote Marcus Aurelius from memory’.

Karsten Schubert was a member of the Faculty of the Fine Arts of the British School at Rome, and sat on the Advisory Board of Drawing Room London. His personal art collection including drawings by Cezanne and Mondrian, as well as ancient sculpture. Schubert’s interest in Grand Tour bronzes cast after antique models reflects both his erudition and his rich intellectual heritage.

RELATED LITERATURE

F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique, The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500-1900, London, 1982, pp.217-219, no.41